Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?

by Thomas Frank

Overview

A SCATHING LOOK AT THE STANDARD-BEARERS OF LIBERAL POLITICS—A BOOK THAT ASKS: WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH DEMOCRATS?

Hailed as “the most prescient book” of the year, Listen, Liberal accurately described what ailed the Democratic Party even before the election of 2016 made their weaknesses obvious. It is the story of how the “Party of the People” detached itself from its historic constituency among average Americans and chose instead to line up with the winners of our new economic order.

Now with a new afterword, Thomas Frank’s powerful analysis offers the best diagnosis to date of the liberal malady. Drawing on years of research and firsthand reporting, Frank points out that the Democrats have over the last decades increasingly abandoned their traditional goals: expanding opportunity, fighting for social justice, and ensuring that workers get a fair deal. With sardonic wit and lacerating logic, he uncovers the corporate and cultural elitism that have largely eclipsed the party’s old working- and middle-class commitment. And he warns that the Democrats’ only chance of regaining their health and averting a future of ever-increasing inequality is a return to their historic faith.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250118134
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	03/14/2017
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	241,620
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

THOMAS FRANK is the author of Pity the Billionaire, The Wrecking Crew, and What’s the Matter with Kansas?. A former columnist for the Wall Street Journal and Harper’s, Frank is the founding editor of The Baffler and writes regularly for Salon. He lives outside Washington, D.C.

Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction: Listen, Liberal
1. Theory of the Liberal Class
2. How Capitalism Got Its Groove Back
3. Th e Economy, Stupid
4. Agents of Change
5. It Takes a Democrat
6. Th e Hipster and the Banker Should Be Friends
7. How the Crisis Went to Waste
8. Th e Defects of a Superior Mind
9. Th e Blue State Model
10. Th e Innovation Class
11. Liberal Gilt
Conclusion: Trampling Out the Vineyard

Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

Editorial Reviews

Thoroughly entertaining . . . Frank delights in skewering the sacred cows of coastal liberalism. . . . He argues that the Democratic party—once 'the Party of the People'—now caters to the interests of a 'professional managerial class' consisting of lawyers, doctors, professors, scientists, programmers, even investment bankers. . . . A serious political critique.”—The New York Times Book Review (front page)

“What makes Frank’s book new, different and important is its offer of a compelling theory as to how and why the party of Jefferson, Jackson and Roosevelt is now so unlikely to champion the economic needs of everyday people. . . . In such a looking-glass world, Listen, Liberal is a desperately needed corrective.”—History News Network

“In his new book, progressive commentator Thomas Frank says Democrats need to take a good long look in the mirror if they want answers to why blue-collar workers are feeling abandoned and even infuriated by what used to be their party.”—New York Post

“Over the past four decades, Frank argues, the Democrats have embraced a new favorite constituency: the professional class—the doctors, lawyers, engineers, programmers, entrepreneurs, artists, writers, financiers and other so-called creatives whose fetish for academic credentials and technological innovation has infected the party of the working class. . . . For that class, Frank argues, income and wealth inequality is not a problem but an inevitable condition.”—The Washington Post

“An astute dissection of contemporary Democratic politics that demonstrates, cogently and at times acidly, how the party lost the allegiance of blue-collar Americans.”—Publishers Weekly

“A tough and thought-provoking look at what’s wrong with America . . . Frank puts forth an impressive catalog of Democratic disappointments, more than enough to make liberals uncomfortable.”—Booklist

“Important . . . Engaging . . . An edgy—even disturbing—analysis of the Democratic Party’s jilting of its traditional base.”—The National Book Review

“Thomas Frank’s new book Listen, Liberal documents a half-century of work by the Democratic elite to belittle working people and exile their concerns to the fringes of the party’s platform. If the prevailing ideology of the Republican establishment is that of a sneering aristocracy, Democratic elites are all too often the purveyors of a smirking meritocracy that offers working people very little.”—The Huffington Post

“Democrats often use the fact that Republicans have gone off the deep end to ignore their left flank, on the grounds that those liberals have nowhere else to go politically. Listen, Liberal contributes to the literature that expresses deep frustration with that decision, the fuel for a revolt.”—The Fiscal Times

“As with Frank’s other books, Listen, Liberal is a piece of contemporary history that tells us not only what the powerful are up to, but how the trick is being pulled, with an admirable deployment of irony. . . . While his previous books are essentially about devils being devils, this one shows how the angels have fallen further than they realize.”—Prospect magazine (UK)

From the Publisher

Listen, Liberal is the thoroughly entertaining if rather gloomy work of a man who feels that nobody has been paying attention. Frank's most famous book, What's the Matter With Kansas? (2004), argued that Republicans had duped the white working class by pounding the table on social issues while delivering tax cuts for the rich…This time Frank is coming for the Ivy League blue-state liberals…Think of it as "What's the Matter With Massachusetts?" Frank's book is an unabashed polemic…Frank delights in skewering the sacred cows of coastal liberalism, including private universities, bike paths, microfinance, the Clinton Foundation, "well-meaning billionaires" and any public policy offering "innovation" or "education" as a solution to inequality…Behind all of this nasty fun is a serious political critique.

The New York Times Book Review - Beverly Gage

03/14/2016
In an astute dissection of contemporary Democratic politics, Frank (Pity the Billionaire) asserts that stagnant wages and the decline of the American middle class were neither unavoidable nor wholly the work of a plutocratic Republican party. He skewers Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and lesser liberal lights such as former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick with the savage clarity of a man who never bought what they were selling. He tracks three grim decades of the party's abrogation of the working class that once filled its rank-and-file membership, replaced by harmful fealty and obsequious reverence toward the "Liberal Class," well-educated, impeccably credentialed white-collar professionals. By the first Clinton administration, non-college-educated laboring voters were left open to widening inequality, a shocking erosion of workers' rights, and a growing concentration of power and capital facilitated by trade pacts like NAFTA. Worse, Democratic establishment figures such as the Clintons have embraced this dynamic, failing to confront abusive financial practices and engaging in fatuous reverence for "innovation" and startup companies. Frank demonstrates, cogently and at times acidly, how the party lost the allegiance of blue-collar Americans. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

09/01/2015
The author of What's the Matter with Kansas? thinks that there's something the matter with Democrats, arguing that they are ignoring the traditional liberal commitments to greater opportunity, greater social justice, and fairness for workers in favor of free-market pandering and more elitist concerns. Now it's time to go in reverse. Great conversation fodder.

Library Journal

2016-02-09
How the party of the working class has switched its focus to well-heeled professionals, more concerned with social issues than economic inequality. "This is a book about the failure of the Democratic Party," writes political analyst and Baffler founding editor Frank (Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right, 2011). "What ails the Democrats?" he asks. "So bravely forthright on cultural issues, their leaders fold when confronted with matters of basic economic democracy." Where David Halberstam once showed how reliance on "the best and the brightest" resulted in wrongheaded decisions on Vietnam, Frank builds a similar case for economic policy, as Ivy League presidents (Bill Clinton, Barack Obama) have surrounded themselves with Ivy League advisers whose perspectives aren't those of what was once the blue-collar base of the Democratic Party: "Thus did the Party of the People turn the government over to Wall Street in the years after Wall Street had done such lasting damage to…well, the People." Frank is particularly acidic on the Clinton presidency, calling his cabinet "a kind of yuppie Woodstock, a gathering of the highly credentialed tribes," and claiming, "what he did as president was far outside the reach of even the most diabolical Republican." In the author's estimation, the hope of the Obama administration turned hopeless. Since Frank is far from a lone voice in the wilderness in his perspective, you'd think he might see allies in the Occupy movement and the Bernie Sanders campaign, but he barely acknowledges the former and makes no mention of the latter, making it seem as if more recent developments lie outside his analysis. Rather than insisting on radical reform from the left or even a third party alternative, he seems to feel that Hillary Clinton is inevitable: "I myself might vote for her," because it would be a "terrible thing" if any of the Republicans became president. A hard-hitting analysis that may leave readers confused by the author's ambivalent, punches-pulling conclusion.

Kirkus Reviews